Lab Systems Engineer / Top Secret with SCI eligibility

About The Role

Peraton is currently seeking an experienced Lab Systems Engineer to design, deploy, and maintain the infrastructure supporting our highly isolated malware analysis and reverse-engineering environments.

Location: Arlington, VA.

In this role, you will: 

• Focus entirely on the foundational architecture: managing enterprise compute, virtualization, storage, and networking systems.
• Collaborate directly with malware analysts and reverse engineers to implement the specific topologies, device networks, and virtual sandboxes they require, ensuring total network containment and rapid environment resets.

Additional areas of responsibility:

• Infrastructure Design & Solutioning: Design and build underlying infrastructure solutions to support the virtualization, emulation, and interconnection of various network device types and analysis systems as requested by the reverse-engineering team.
• Virtualization Stack Management: Administer and optimize the enterprise virtualization layer using VMware ESXi and vCenter server management.
• Hyperconverged Infrastructure: Deploy, maintain, and scale underlying compute nodes across Cisco Hyperflex system.
• Storage Administration: Provision and manage high-performance data lifecycles and datastores on NetApp storage platforms.
• Network Segmentation & Isolation: Configure and maintain Cisco network switches, enforcing rigorous VLAN configurations to ensure absolute containment between analysis cells.
• Firewall Infrastructure Engineering: Implement, audit, and manage strict security rule sets, access control lists, and custom routing tables on Palo Alto firewalls.
• Operating System Provisioning: Build, patch, and harden baseline enterprise Windows servers, Linux servers, and Linux desktops ready for analytical deployment.
• Centralized Systems Management: Manage compliance, patching, and deployment pipelines across the Linux infrastructure fleet using Ubuntu Landscape.
• Log Aggregation & Monitoring: Maintain infrastructure visibility, performance metrics, and environment logging by configuring and managing dashboards and alerts in Splunk.

#CISA

Qualifications

Minimum Requirements are:  

• Bachelors degree and 8 years of relevant experience; or, an MA/MS degree with 6 years experience; 3 years with PhD. An additional 4 years of experience may be considered in lieu of the bachelors degree. 
• Demonstrated Experience in:
  • Architectural Design: Proven experience designing and configuring underlying enterprise infrastructure architectures, with an emphasis on strict security boundaries or air-gapped testbeds.
  • Network Device Support: Familiarity with configuring hypervisors, virtual switches, or bare-metal setups to successfully host virtual appliances, virtual network functions (VNFs), or network emulation platforms.
  • Virtualization: Deep technical expertise with VMware ESXi architectures and enterprise management through vCenter.
  • Hardware & Storage: Hands-on experience managing Cisco Hyperflex environment and provisioning NetApp storage solutions.
  • Networking & Firewalls: Strong routing, switching, and VLAN configuration skills utilizing Cisco hardware alongside firewall administration experience on Palo Alto platforms.
  • Systems Administration: Advanced proficiency in configuring, maintaining, and deploying enterprise Windows servers, Linux servers, and Linux desktops.
  • Orchestration & Data Collection: Practical experience utilizing Ubuntu Landscape for Linux management and Splunk for infrastructure log collection.
• U.S. citizenship required. 
• An active Top Secret security clearance.
  • Ability to obtain and maintain DHS EOD/SCI.

Details

Target Salary Range: $112,000 - $179,000. This represents the typical salary range for this position. Salary is determined by various factors, including but not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the position, the individual’s experience, education, knowledge, skills, and competencies, as well as geographic location and business and contract considerations. Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay.

Benefits Statement: Peraton offers eligible employees a variety of benefits including medical, dental, vision, life, health savings account, short/long term disability, EAP, parental leave, 401(k), paid time off (PTO) for vacation, and company paid holidays. A full listing of available benefits can be viewed at 

Application Statements: The application period for the job is estimated to be 30 days from the job posting date. However, this timeline may be shortened or extended depending on business needs and the availability of qualified candidates. By applying to this job, you are expressing interest in the role and the Company. During the review of your application, you may be required to participate in an on-camera interview, as well as participate in a process to verify your identity.

EEO: Equal opportunity employer, including disability and protected veterans, or other characteristics protected by law.